


Shadow of the Colossus Movie Script Review

by Sparky_Lurkdragon



Category: Shadow of the Colossus, Team ICO Series
Genre: Archived From Tumblr, Archived from lurkdragonstuff blog, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Meta Essay, Nonfiction, Parental Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-24
Updated: 2018-02-24
Packaged: 2019-10-07 05:08:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17359586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sparky_Lurkdragon/pseuds/Sparky_Lurkdragon
Summary: I managed to get through Dan Olsen's reading of Justin Marks' take on a Shadow of the Colossus screenplay.It was Pretty Bad.





	Shadow of the Colossus Movie Script Review

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Shadow of the Colossus Script and Mobile Extravaganza](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/447809) by Folding Long Plays. 



Got through [Dan Olson’s reading](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DW9llI3c-ibo&t=OGIwZGM4Y2ZiYTM1NzgzZTM2NjhkMThiYjdhNGEyNzg4YTc1NGNjNiwxOGk1aE11Ng%3D%3D&b=t%3AG7HhDIszKxM5n32cxHMOEQ&p=https%3A%2F%2Flurkdragonstuff.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F171233654733%2Fgot-through-dan-olsons-reading-of-the-old-shadow&m=1) of the old  _Shadow of the Colossus_  movie script by Justin Marks, the guy who wrote the script for  _Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li_ , and, uh.

It’s.

It’s… super bad.

No,  _worse._

Like, one of the things I love about  _Colossus_  is how everyone takes something different from it. What you get out of the game depends a lot on what you bring to it. I legitimately find it really cool seeing other fans’ interpretations of what’s going on, and even if I do wish more of the fandom agreed with some of my own interpretations, by and large they’re all at least interesting.

So it is  _really saying something_  that I’m looking at this script and thinking “ _How_  did this guy miss the point  ** _that badly_** ” when by and large my general attitude toward the game is ‘the point of the story is what you yourself think the point is.’

This got long, so have a read more. I’m mostly focused on how it mangles the game’s themes, but the script has a lot, I mean a  _lot_  of problems besides that, and I’d recommend watching Dan’s take. The portion of the linked video where he talks about the script is from the start to about 2 hours, 20 minutes in.

Tl;dr this script is a monstrosity that demonstrates How Not To Do Things and I’m actually kind of fascinated by it because of that.

I mean… okay, so, broadly speaking you can divide the major interpretations of the game into two general lines of thought.

1\. Wander is the villain protagonist who may have understandable motives but is taking the incorrect action, Dormin is evil or at least amoral in the sense of a Lovecraftian monster, and Lord Emon is the heroic antagonist coming to clean up Wander’s mess and stop him from unleashing a demon on the world by murdering innocent guardians for the sake of one cursed woman.

2\. Wander is at worst an anti-hero and is ultimately taking the correct action even if killing the Colossi is sad, Dormin is good or at least neutral in the sense of a force of nature, and Lord Emon is at best misguided about both Dormin’s nature and the necessity of sacrificing Mono or at worst the cause of all these problems for having her ritually killed in the first place.

Or, more succinctly:

1\. Dormin is evil, and everyone’s relative morality reflects whether they’re helping them or not.

2\. Dormin is not evil, and everyone’s relative morality reflects whether they’re helping them or not.

It’s squishy around the edges because everything about this game is, and that’s part of what’s so great about it. I know that any Hollywood adaptation is going to lose some of that because that’s just what Hollywood is like, but I really did not see “ _Both_  Emon  _and_  Dormin are evil” coming. Like I’ve literally never seen that line of thought from the fanbase.

It almost feels calculated to piss off  _both_  Team Punch Dormin In The Face  _and_  Team Punch Emon In The Face. I’m sure it isn’t, it just seems to be bad writing, but it is bad writing in a truly fascinating way.

I’m pretty firmly on Team Punch Emon In The Face and  _even I_ was rolling my eyes at how over the top he is here. I don’t like Emon, but I don’t think he’d drown a dude in a puddle for (completely reasonably!) calling for a rest. 

I wouldn’t be at all surprised to hear about members of Team Punch Dormin In The Face rolling their eyes at how over the top Dormin is here, either. They don’t even have their cool archaic speaking patterns! 

And like it misses the point that Mono was  _sacrificed_  and that has completely different connotations to ‘thrown into a barn wall by abusive father’ ( _yes, really_ ), there’s this weird stuff that Dan goes into about Wander being an outsider and how that kind of breaks the plot (tl;dr he doesn’t have any real stakes here, since if he didn’t grow up with the legend of Dormin it’s weird that that’s his first thought when Mono dies, and also he knows Mono for like four days beforehand wtf), and baby!Wander just has scars instead of horns and like???

Okay, so you really have to know about  _ICO_  to understand the significance of baby Wander’s horns, and I gueeeess it might’ve been changed because Dormin’s so over the top here and We Cannot Have the Hero Associated Too Strongly With The Demon He Vanquished, or something. I feel like it’s a material change that further points to Marks not understanding what the game was saying (namely that Wander still has a connection to Dormin, whatever you think that might imply), but it could also be an intentional change to take the changes in how Dormin is defeated into account. A very baffling intentional change, to be sure, but I could… potentially see where he was going with it, I guess?

But then Dormin being so over the top just raises so many questions about why Mono was revived. Even fans who consider Dormin evil do generally at least grant that they willingly held up their end of the bargain because Wander helped them: movie!Dormin here has absolutely no reason to want to help Wander out since he defied them at the end and was a key reason why they lost.

It’s just. So bad, and I’m glad this movie doesn’t exist, and I fear what may happen if  _Shadow of the Colossus_  ever is made into a Hollywood film. There’s differing interpretations of an ambiguous story, and then there’s missing even what few concrete points it made.


End file.
